House Set To Vote On Ending Government Shutdown

The House is set to vote on ending the government shutdown today. Senior Reporter for The Hill, Mike Lillis, explains what to watch for as the day unfolds.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Go to the high Line and bring in senior reporter
at the Hill, Mike Lillis. You can check out all
of his work and a whole lot more at the
Hill dot com and you can follow him on x
at real Mike Lillis. Mike, thanks so much for a
ticket a few minutes to join us this morning. So
overnight the House Rules Committee voting along party lines to
advance the Senate's government funding deal. Now it goes to

(00:21):
the full House final vote expected today. But I want
to start with how we got here. What was it
that led Democrats, eight of them to cave and decide
to move this deal forward.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, good morning, Ryan, thanks for having me. You know,
it's a great question, and the short answer is that,
you know, the dam broke because those eight senators thought
that the paint of the shutdown was just too much.
They didn't see Republicans giving an inch on the healthcare
demand that Democrats were making, so they held their noses.
They pushed it through the Senate. They gave Republicans the
sixty votes that they needed, and of course the backlash

(00:58):
is severe. You know, there were huge risks in doing that.
The liberals are furious. Number one, So there's this danger
of deflating your base, especially you know, after last week's
elections when THEMS had won everything. So you know, now
liberals are apoplectic. They're saying, we were winning in you caved,
and they want scalps. They're going after Schumer, they're going
after everybody. So that fallout is very real, and the

(01:21):
short term damage will be tangible. But if you talk
to some of the guys who have been around here
a while, you know, the savvier observers of Washington politics
and Capitol Hill, they say that those eight defectors might
actually have helped Democrats in the long run. They gave them,
They gave them the off ramp that had been so
elusive for all those weeks. And the reason is, you know,

(01:42):
for one thing, Democrats were never going to get the
thing they were asking for. They were they wanted to
guarantee that these Obamacare subsidies would be extended. And why
do I say that, You know, the history tells us
that whenever the minority party, the Democrats are the minority
party in the House, the White House, and the Senate,
whenever the minority party makes a specific artisan policy demand,
they never win. And you go back to twenty thirteen,

(02:04):
when you know, Republicans wanted to repeal Obamacare and Ted
Cruz shut down the government for a while, they had
to cave. You go back to twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
when Trump wanted the wall and Senate was controlled by Democrats,
they had to cave on the wall. You never get
that demand because those are big policy wins that have
to happen after voters have you know, spoken at the polls,

(02:26):
after big wave elections, after you know, Obamacare in twenty ten,
tax cuts in twenty seventeen. So if the Democrats want
to extend Obamacare, they had the way to do it
is to take their message to the voters and win
back power. And that's kind of the other reason some
of those observers think Democrats are well positioned to win
the long game. You know, they lost the battle, but

(02:46):
they might win the war, so to speak. They didn't
get the ACAA on this bill, but they did get
you know, snap benefits going out. They're going to open
up air traffic control, They're going to do all those
things that are affecting people every day, you know, and
making the pain of the shutdown really acute in living rooms,
outside of Washington, d C. And so you know now

(03:08):
and the other thing is, now we're talking about healthcare,
which is which is a boon to Democrats, and they
think that they can use it in the midterms. So
for all those reasons, those eight Democrats you know, again,
held their noses, voted for it. They'll take all the fire,
including all the friendly fire, but none of them are
up for reelection and so they can handle it. A
lot of them are in fact retiring. So you know, yes,

(03:32):
there is there is near term damage and there's near
term you know, fury on the left, but look at
it over the long term, I think you might see
a different game plan out.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
We're joined by senior reporter at The Hill, Mike Lillis.
Again you can find all of his work at the
Hill dot com. That's what you had mentioned a moment ago.
That's what I've been saying. The Democrats might have lost
this battle, they could end up winning the war. And
I mean that in the sense of the mid terms
next year. It remains to be seen. They still have

(04:04):
a lot of work to do. But you know, that
vote right now, you've got Democrats fighting amongst themselves. But
once that vote happens in the Senate on the subsidies.
It's not going to pass by authentications. But that's when
you're going to start to see the infighting among Republicans
and especially in the House, and Democrats are going to

(04:26):
be coalescing around that issue.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That's exactly right. And you mentioned that John Thune, the
Senate majority leader, has promised to vote Mike Johnson. In
the House, the Speaker has not promised to vote. He
does not want to take that vote for the reason
you just mentioned, which is he does not want to
get people on the record voting against subsidies that are
going to be popular and in fact affect a lot
of red states even more so than they do Blue states.

(04:52):
If you look at the where those subsidies are being
gold out right now, it's a lot of the South
and rural districts. So he doesn't want to put people
on the record voting against it. And if the premiums
jump for millions of people on January first, then Democrats
are going to be in a good place to say
it's because Trump and the Republicans didn't act to prevent it.

(05:14):
You know, they will have a clear argument to make
there whether or not we're talking about that a year
from now at you know, during the midterms, as voters
are going to the polls, there's a different story.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
We always we always have to take a deep breath here.
I remember in twenty thirteen when we were covering that
and Crews and the Republicans really got beat up for that.
That was a sixteen day shutdown. It was less than
half the length of this one, and everybody said, man,
Republicans are going to get clobbered in the midterms. A
year later, there wasn't a single campaign in the country
that was talking about Obamacare or healthcare. Now, the difference

(05:48):
this time is if those premiums go up January first,
people are still going to be feeling it by the
time the elections happen, and so that might very well
be a very resonant issue at the polls. And of
course that's what Democrats are hoping. But you know, Son
has promised that vote, and it will fail in the Senate,
won't get sixty votes, but it will put all those

(06:08):
senators on record, you know, opposing opposing popular subsidies. So yeah,
again it's a messaging battle at this point. You know,
the pain that patients feel in the meantime will be acute.
I think it's twenty two twenty four million people on
who are receiving those Obamacare subsidies right now, so you know,
it's a huge number. As a percentage of the country,

(06:30):
it's a little bit smaller, So I think Republicans are
rolling the dice a little bit, but they think they
can get away with it. So we'll just have to
see how all of that plays out. There is a
group I should mention of House kind of moderates, guys
who are facing tough reelections next year who are really
pushing Johnson and GOP leaders to bring that bill to
the floor, and they think that their careers would be

(06:52):
would be cut short if that if something is not done.
So we'll see how that pressure campaign heats up here
after the passage of this Senate You could expect that
to really heat up in December.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
All right, Senior reporter at the Hill, Mike Lillis, real quick.
There's no question this is going to pass today in
the House, right the government funding bill.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
This is the House, so there's always a question. It
is expected. It is widely expected to pass. You know,
there could be some hiccups. You know, there's at least
one Republican, Tom Massey, who's going to vote against it.
There's at least one Democrat who will cancel out that
vote by voting for it. That's Jared Golden in Maine.
A couple other Democrats who probably will vote for it also.

(07:34):
So but the crucial factor here is that the House
Freedom Caucus that's kind of the the you know, the
far right conservative group that tends to vote against all
government spending bills because because they say that the levels
are too high and they want to reign in deficits,
and they will vote against bills even if their leadership
drafts them. But in this case, they are on board.

(07:55):
They're going to vote for it. Andy Harris, who's the
chairman of that group, told us yesterday that we're all
in on that. And kind of the reason is that
a lot of those House Freedom Caucus members are seeking
higher office. They're not even running for House this year. Yeah,
that's you know, Chip Roy in Texas, Nancy Mason South Carolina,
byronn Donalds in Florida. The list goes on and on

(08:16):
and on. They all want Donald Trump's endorsement. So nobody
wants to confront Donald Trump by voting against a bill
that he wants to pass and then just shutdown. So
that's kind of the crucial factor. These guys will will
bend to Trump, and Trump supports it, so that's why
we think this will pass pretty easily today.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Senior reporter at The Hill, Mike Lillis. Again, you can
find all of his work and a whole lot more
at the Hill dot com, and you can follow him
on x as well at Real Mike Lillis. Mike really
appreciate time and insight. Thanks so much, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Ran happy to join you so.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
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